Global Issues - Child Labor

[Name of the Institute]

Introduction

The Global Corporate Environment: Not a Success Story

The global business environment has transferred the world in to the fast track growth phase. Facing a global market with almost unlimited resources and ample profits to be had, the businesses are changing themselves to embark on the global journey. The profits to be had and plenty and the raw materials and the resources required to fund the expansion phase, can be outsourced from a developing country. Hence the multinational companies that have a base in the developed countries, have a unique opportunity to attain high levels of success. Most of the corporate giants around the world have taken a part in the ferocious struggle to attain as much of the lucrative global market pie as possible, resulting in an unparalleled emergence of western organizations in the developing countries. The result of this expansion has caused several positive trends in the global business environment, such as the introduction of several innovative products and services for the world market. The latest products and services have now been able to be produced and sold in the markets of the developing countries, and through these technologies and advanced products these countries have experienced economic growth.

The increased level of competition has caused the companies to invest more in the research and development facilities and produce better products. The companies are now more motivated to offer differentiated products to the market, which will enable them to offer something new to the global customers. The organizations have now also been able to become more horizontal in structure, in reference to their managerial hierarchy; in order to be able to increase the responsiveness of the organization and the productivity of the employees. The employees themselves have also been empowered to make critical and import6ant organizational decisions and their span of job responsibilities has drastically increased. The work force is now more ethnically and culturally diverse and the monumental size of the organizations, have caused them to achieve economies of scale and bring down the costs of production by a significant large margin. Looking at the economic side of the impact of globalization, than there are only positive outcomes, however a deeper analysis of the negative impacts of the phenomenon; shows a contrary picture. The exponential growth in the process of globalization has caught many of the developing countries by surprise, which never had the correct administrative controls or the business knowledge to become a part of the global corporate entity. These developing countries were driven by the lure of the monumental size of the investment and profits attained by the multinational organizations, and they ignored the humanitarian and ethical standards. The ugly subject of child labor has often been ignored by the global corporate environment (Basu & Van, 1998). It is merely seen as collateral of doing business in the global context. The multinational organizations often respond to the subject, by giving generic statements or trivializing the issue; however the fact is that ...